Monday, February 8, 2010

Super Duper Bowl Ads

The Super Bowl is the only television show in which I mute the action and listen to the ads. I need a Tivo that works in reverse, I guess. I admire the ingenuity of those thirty second spots that can tell a whole story in a few blinks of an eye and make me laugh, too. But then, I love humor. The first section of the newspaper that I read on Sunday morning is the comic section. Life can be boring, sad, frightening, grim even. So why not start the day with a few chuckles?

When my kids were in grade school, my daughter would come home eager to share every grievance she’d encountered that day. My son would just shrug when asked how the day went. So I started asking them what one funny thing happened that day. It changed the way they thought about their experiences. They started seeing annoyances as anecdotes to share at supper. Even now, our phone conversations are full of funny stories.

That’s my philosophy when I write, too. If I can make myself laugh, then hopefully a reader will find it amusing. I even look forward to the TV show about the best commercials of the year. (The foreign ones are often funniest.) But I’m a little disappointed in the commercials I’ve seen on the Super Bowl so far. They’re, well, I guess I’d call them interesting. A few are just odd. But none have made me laugh out loud, although the E Trade one with the babies on the plane and the Audi commercial about the green police earned chuckles. However, as I write and post this, it’s not quite half-time, so maybe funnier ones are coming up.

Do you watch the Super Bowl? If so, do you watch for the game or the commercials, or both? Did you have a favorite Super Bowl commercial this year or did you find them lame?